Bad Things (41 page)

last time she’d seen him he’d been delivering a series of sharp, clini-

cal blows to her face and body while another man kept an eye on the

B A D T H I N G S 299

road out of the window and appeared as if, all in all, he’d rather be

somewhere else.

“ ’S’up, girl,” the man said, smiling at her in the way you smile

at a plate of food that’s exactly what you ordered. “Got your boy in

here.”

“Is . . . is he okay?”

“Everything’s cool. Just want you to come for a ride, is all.”

“That’s not going to happen,” the tall woman said.

The man laughed. “The fuck are you going to—”

But then he saw the woman’s face.

And shut up.

C H A P T E R 4 0

Ten minutes later I ran back upstairs. By now it was raining much

harder outside. I could hear it drumming on the roof of the high,

vaulted space.

“I think we can get out of here.”

“How?” Her voice sounded fl at, uninterested.

“Window.”

“You’ve got it open?”

“Not yet. But a few more kicks will do it.”

“Hurray for you.” There was silence in the darkness for a mo-

ment. “And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you said. Who knows who’s out there? So you stick your

head out and get—”

“Carol, it’s either that or we stay here and suffer whatever

they’ve got in mind.”

She picked Tyler up, and followed me downstairs.

“I’m going to have to go fi rst,” I said, when we were back by the

window. I fl icked the lighter and showed her what we would be deal-

ing with. A window around three feet square. “Carol.”

B A D T H I N G S 301

She wasn’t looking at the window, but at the empty shelves back

in the utility room.

“I can still smell it,” she said.

“Smell what?”

“Wild strawberry and something. Some other berry. That weird

woman, remember, who set up a stall one Saturday down by the mar-

ket in Roslyn?”

“Carol . . .”

“And you liked it so much and you don’t even
eat
that kind of

stuff, and she wasn’t there again for months and so when she fi nally

turned up again we . . .”

She trailed off. I couldn’t smell anything but dust and I doubted

that she could, either, in reality. But I recalled the day the woman had

reappeared with her ramshackle stall, me slapping down a handful of

bills and buying every damned jar she had—and us carrying the box

back to the car together and how all the way home we were laugh-

ing about how we were jam millionaires now, this was the start of a

preserve monopoly the like of which the Pacifi c Northwest had never

known. I remembered, too, how when it came to clearing out the

house after we’d sold it, there was not a single jar left, though I didn’t

recall fi nishing it, or anything like.

“What happened to it?”

“I threw it all away,” she said. “A week after I found out about you

and Jenny. Put the jars in a bag and carried them into the forest and

threw every single one against a tree.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but for just a moment then, I

thought I could smell it, too. Not in the house, but in my head. A

sweetness.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh.”

I shut up, and heard what she’d heard. It was hard to make out

302 Michael Marshall

against the rain, but it sounded like a vehicle heading up the drive

toward the front door, around the corner of the house from where

we stood.

“Take him,” Carol said.

“What?”

“Take Tyler with you.” She held him out toward me. “There’s no

point me leaving.
Just take him!
”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“Then we’ll die together,” she said.

“Die? Carol, what is it that you think is going on here? Why

won’t you
tell
me?”

She put Tyler gently down on the ground, kissed him on the

forehead, and ran back upstairs into the house. Tyler tried to follow

her, but I grabbed him. He started to cry louder, to call out for his

mother.

“Tyler,
shh
.”

But he wouldn’t, of course. Left in the dark with a man who meant

nothing to him, what else was he going to do but cry?

I pulled him farther up my chest and clamped my hand over his

mouth. He kicked, and tried to strike out, surprisingly strong and

heavy, as boy children are. I heard the vehicle come to a halt outside,

the sound of doors opening.

I tried to whisper into Tyler’s ear, but he was having none of it. I

waited until I heard the sound of at least two sets of footprints head

around toward the front door.

“Tyler,” I said fi rmly. “Listen to me. Your mom’s gone outside.

We’re going to go fi nd her. But we have to go through this window,

okay? We’re
going to fi nd your mom
. Do you understand?”

He stopped struggling. I felt him nod.

“I’ve got to put you down. You stand right here, okay? Stand
right

here, and I’m going to open the window and get out and then get you

out, too, okay?”

Another nod. I could feel his breath hot and wet against the palm

B A D T H I N G S 303

of my hand. I put him down, removing my hand from his face as the

last thing.

He stood there, not moving.

I knew this was only going to work if it happened fast, so I pushed

straight out with my foot, planting it hard and square in the middle

of the window.

It gave six inches, and I did it again, and then stopped and planted

both my palms on it and gave it a slow, steady shove. The bottom half

came away, letting in a sudden blast of cold air and revealing blue fad-

ing light outside—but the top portion didn’t budge. “Fuck,” I said.

Tyler watched, his head tilted slightly back, apparently transfi xed

by the sight of light.

I put one leg over the sill and lowered it to the ground outside,

pushing up against the board with my back. It gave, a little. I pulled

my other foot up onto the sill, stayed bunched up there.

“We’re going to have to do this very quickly, okay? Come

closer.”

“You’re not my daddy,” he said.

“Yes, Tyler, I am.”

“You don’t smell right.” He raised one hand and pointed to the

window. “My daddy’s out there. In the woods.”

I heard the sound of footsteps entering the house above, and then

Carol’s voice carrying from the main room.

“He went upstairs,” she said, far more loudly than necessary. “God

knows how he thought he was going to get us out from up there, but

that’s guys for you, right? All action, no thought.”

I knew there was no time left, and shoved my foot as I hard as I

could against the sill. The board came away, all at once, dropping me

fl at on my back into long, wet grass.

I jumped straight back up and went back to the window. “Tyler,”

I said. “Come to—”

But he was gone.

Gone back to his mother. He hadn’t believed a word I’d told him,

304 Michael Marshall

just waited until he could get away from the stranger, and back to the

woman he loved.

I swore but knew it made no sense to go back in, so I turned from

the window and made my way toward the front of the house, keeping

tight up against its side. When I got close to the corner I dropped low,

and ducked my head around.

A small white truck was parked outside the front door. There was

a man standing by the side of it. I realized I knew him. He was Brian

Jackson, the mechanic who’d tried to fi x the salon woman’s car the

other morning on Kelly Street.

I saw also that he had a gun, at about the exact same moment that

he caught sight of me.

He shouted. I turned and ran, trying to lift my feet high enough to clear the grass and get up speed. I headed straight down the side of

the house at fi rst, then realized I should try to bank out toward where

the woods started, on the left-hand side.

Meanwhile he kept shouting. I didn’t know how many men had

gone into the house, or if they were armed, too. It seemed likely, which meant there wasn’t any other option but to keep running

through the rain.

I made it into the trees about thirty seconds later, heading for the

area where the path had started. Three years had all but erased it, tan-

gling the ways with ferns and dogwood. I plowed along the ghost of it

nonetheless, not bothering to glance behind. It only slows you down.

After fi fty yards I saw the slanted shadow of the abandoned home-

stead, and broke from the path to head over to it. I dropped around

the far side, chest thumping. When we’d lived here I’d entertained

ideas about renovating this structure, putting a new roof on it and

using it as a study or den or summerhouse. Like a lot of things I’d

assumed the future held, it didn’t happen. I was glad it was here now,

B A D T H I N G S 305

though, and pulled myself up to the side and stuck my head up over

the top.

The man from the truck was advancing down the slope of the

lawn, still outside the trees, gun held out in front of him. I saw the

shape of another man joining him from the direction of the house. It

was too far, and getting too dark, to see who this man might be. I still

couldn’t understand what the hell the mechanic might have against

me, or how he could be a part of this, whatever it was. It didn’t matter.

He was a guy with a gun coming in my direction, which put him on

the wrong side of all useful alliances I could imagine.

A shot cracked out.

I wasn’t sure whether it was the mechanic or the other man, but

whoever it was had some idea of where I was. A beat after the fl at slap

of the gun, a bullet swacked through foliage only ten feet to the side

of me.

Someone shouted out, to me or about me I couldn’t tell.

I turned, looked into the forest. From my current position it

stretched into the growing dark, for mile after mile into the moun-

tains. If I headed that way, nothingness was all there was to fi nd. No

houses, no roads, no logging tracks, just trees and rocks.

If I pulled
up
the slope then I’d be coming back around to the

point where the driveway looped in front of the house. Maybe I could

get to their vehicle fi rst and derail whatever they were supposed to be

doing next—but I doubted they’d left the keys in it, or that I’d have

time to start it before they got to me. If they had two people look-

ing, it likely meant at least two more were back up at the house. With

nothing in my hand there was nothing I could achieve against four

guys. I hated the idea of leaving Carol behind, but getting off the fi eld

of play was the only plan that made sense right now.

Which meant going
down
the slope, trying to cut across the bot-

tom there and make it out to the road. It was only fi fty yards across

the base of the lawn to where the other copse of trees started, and

306 Michael Marshall

another hundred or so up to the fence. If I could send the two visible

men in the wrong direction, just a little, I should be able to do it.

They were now at the tree line, walking ten feet apart, advancing

slowly. I bent low and headed away from the ruined wooden cabin,

banking into the trees in the hope that the trunks would obfuscate

what I was doing. It seemed to work, as no one shot at me. When

I’d put a little more distance between us I altered course radically

and headed down toward the lake instead, moving faster until I was

twenty yards from where the trees ran out.

The lake was long and gray and pocked with falling slices of

white. I was going to stand out against it, even in this light. That just

meant I had to do it fast. There was nowhere else for me to go.

I couldn’t see the men now. They were back in the trees some-

where. I heard one of them call out to the other, and got an impres-

sion of where and how far away they were. It sounded like they were

acting on the assumption I was heading deeper into the woods.

I gave it another minute to commit them a little further, and then

broke cover.

My foot slipped as I kicked off, and I didn’t get up to speed as fast

as I hoped. The grass was just as long here, too, and wet. But I ran,

upright, selling caution to get up as much pace as I could. Halfway

across I heard a shout. I kept going.

I was just yards from the trees when there was a distant clap, and it

felt like someone had punched me in the side from behind. It knocked

me off balance and I spun into the copse and crashed into a tree.

I was back on my feet quickly, albeit in an involuntary crouch.

The stinging high in my side told me it hadn’t been a punch. Didn’t

mean anything except I had to keep going, and fast. There was dis-

tant shouting behind, and it sounded angry now.

Once I was into the trees I straightened up and ran as fast as I

could. I knew exactly where I was going because this used to be on my

jogging trail, wearing a shirt which was now in the manila envelope

I’d lost when I’d been taken out in the bank parking lot. I scrambled